A Shadow on the Stars
by cywol
Summary: When the world ends shortly after the storm, Max is forced to rewind. To avert the catastrophe - the Temporal Cataclysm - she must travel back farther than ever before, in pursuit of the Jarrings; moments when time comes to a complete halt. But some problems may be beyond even a time traveler...
1. Chapter 1 - Prologue

The storm wasn't the end.

We should have known, really. After all, why should it have been? What evidence did we have for any of our thoughts and suspicions? We were just stumbling around in the dark, playing with forces that we couldn't even begin to understand. It had all seemed so clean - a final, impossible choice meant to close the circle - so how could it not have been true? How could sacrificing Chloe not have restored everything to the way it was before?

Well, all I know is, it didn't. Whatever we did, it wasn't enough - at least, not to avoid what came next. So I took it back. I found my power again and hell, I took both those choices back several times over before I realised it was pointless. If time isn't going to play by my rules, I'm going to have to figure something else out.

And besides, I don't want to lose my best friend. Not again.

So I'm going to do it. I'm going to stop it all: the storm; the darkness; the cataclysm; and the end of the world. Everything is unravelling, and somebody has to put it back together. Chloe thinks that somebody is me, and I guess I have to believe that. As far as I know, I'm the only one with the power to do anything about it. I suppose if time had really wanted Chloe to die, it wouldn't have given me these powers in the first place.

So maybe it's time I actually started using them. Maybe I'm not supposed to stick to the limits, after all: maybe I'm meant to go beyond them, to do something that the world can't do on its own.

Maybe it's time I became Super-Max.

 _\- Excerpt from the journal of Max Caulfield._


	2. Chapter 2 - Broken Butterfly

"Max!"

The cry was shrill and piercing, making her wince. Lying on her back, staring up at the bright blue sky overhead, the young girl tried to stay still, breathing slowly as she recovered from the exhausting transition. Where before there had been nothing but fire and shadows, there was now life and form; a sky overhead that was more than a dark, foaming maw. There was a sun. There were clouds.

They were things that you hardly notice when they're there, but when they're gone…

Yeah, you definitely miss them.

"Shit," the voice cried, as a blue-haired girl swept into view, concerned eyes peering down at Max. "You weren't even gone for- ugh, damn, I suppose I should be used to that by now. How was it this time? You look…" Chloe seemed to be choosing her words carefully, until she concluded bluntly, "bad. Like, really bad. Badder than bad."

Rubbing her brow gingerly, Max sat up, blinking away the stars in front of her eyes. "I'm… alright," she lied. "Feels a bit like I was just hit by a truck."

"Who would have thought that time travel was such a massive pain?" Chloe sighed, crouching down next to her. Insects buzzed in the long grass around them, reminding Max that here, in this specific time and timeline, it was summer: the 21st of July, just over nine months after the storm that had swept Arcadia Bay off the map. "Why can't it be simple, you know? And why does that always happen?" she asked, pointing at Max's nose.

Hastily wiping away her nosebleed, Max shook her head. "Who knows?" she muttered, closing her eyes to try to stave off an approaching headache. "We've got more important mysteries to deal with, anyway. That one can wait."

The blue-haired girl nodded soberly. "So," Chloe hesitated, fidgeting with her fingers. "What did you see this time?"

"Just the same thing as before," Max murmured, slowly getting to her feet.

"You mean-"

"The stars go out first, and that freaks everyone out. Then there are the storms, both on land and over the sea. They destroy everything, Chloe. You wouldn't believe how much…" Taking a shuddering breath, Max shook her head quickly. "It's just like a nightmare, but it always ends the same way. Everything goes black, and there's a final Jarring. I can never get beyond that bit."

"A Jarring." Chloe repeated the word slowly. "Oh yeah, that's when it all freezes for you, right? See: I didn't forget. Why do you think it happens, then? Got any ideas?"

She wished she did. Sighing, Max forced herself to shake her head again, hating herself for her ignorance and powerlessness. In any movie that she had ever watched with superpowers, the heroes managed to come to terms with them quickly. Hollywood had told her over and over again that it should only take about ninety minutes to become a natural wizard, warrior - anything. Here in the real world, however, things were much more complicated.

"All I know is, I sometimes get the Jarrings when I'm in a really bad situation. I had them in the Dark Room, when I was about to die, and there was one before that too… with Kate…"

Chloe winced at the mention of the Dark Room. "It's so weird that I was technically dead when you were in there for the first time. And now I'm back. I guess I'm basically a zombie."

"Chloe…"

"Sorry." A flash of guilt passed across her eyes. "I- know it was hard, saving me all those times and everything. I mean, everyone else…"

"Let's not talk about the storm," Max mumbled, feeling again that knotting, clenching sensation in her chest. "I'm going to find a way, I promise. If there's anything I can do, I'll do it."

The blue-haired girl looked nervous. "So then… you're planning to go back? To before?"

The wind was still as Max looked at her friend's face, wondering when next she would see her again. Behind her, the ruins of the lighthouse stood lone and stark on the cliff top: a broken structure that could no longer gaze out across the boundless sea. In that small field by the treeline, surrounded by wildflowers and wilderness, there were no vast forces stirring. There was no darkness in the heavens - no vortex curling in the skies above the shattered remnants of Arcadia Bay. It was an ordinary day, and perhaps that was why she kept coming here.

It was something concrete: something she could use to ground herself. Without this island moment in time, she was certain that she would have already lost her mind.

"Chaos theory, right?" Max said quietly. "This has to have started somewhere. The farther back I go, Chloe, the more I think I see. The Jarrings aren't just for me; they go back a long, long time. I thought it was me that was breaking time, but I don't know anymore. I'm beginning to think that it was something from ages ago, way before I even got these powers. Maybe it's part of the reason why I have them in the first place…"

"And…" Chloe's voice was hesitant. "You've been back pretty far before, right? I mean… how far do you think you'll need to go?"

That was a question that Max had tried to avoid.

"I don't know," she replied, truthfully. "I've moved past the photographs, though. Turns out, they were just helping me focus on the moments." She laughed, a little shakily. "I suppose I can go back however far I want…"

There was a long pause as they both considered the implications. Eventually, Chloe said softly, "Well I bow down to my guardian angel, Lady Maximus herself…"

Max tried to smile, but couldn't. "I'm… scared, Chloe. What if- what if I can't find my way back?"

A particularly strong gust of wind struck them both at that moment, and she staggered. Chloe, though, did not even seem to notice, her dark eyes set unfalteringly on Max's face.

"We'll always be together," she replied, uncharacteristically softly. "You know that, right? No matter where or when you are, I'm always going to be there. You know I've always got your back. I'm your sidekick. You'd better not forget it."

"I won't." Blinking away tears, Max took another shaky breath. "Well… I suppose we should get this started then. No time like the present, future, or whatever this is…"

"Wait." Before Max could prepare herself, Chloe had thrown her arms around her waist. Her breath was hot against Max's neck, reminding her that—right now at least—this was real. "Before you go… promise me you'll remember we were here. I don't care if you change everything, because I know you'll fix it in the end. Just… remember this. Remember we were both here, at some point…"

It took all of Max's self control not to break down right there and then.

"I'll remember," she said hoarsely, raising one of her arms, palm-outwards. "I promise."

A final, lilting breath of wind drifted across the quiet field.

"Goodbye, Max," Chloe whispered.

Closing her eyes, Max raised her other hand to mimic the other. Using both, she could travel farther than ever, and there did not always need to be a body waiting for her on the other side. Exhaling with a shudder, she buried her face in her friend's shoulder.

"Bye, Chloe," she gasped.

And, with a single, lonely thought, she hurled herself into the past.


	3. Chapter 3 - Older Moments

The Temporal Cataclysm: that was what they called it. In every future, it was the same. First came the darkness - a shadow on the stars - but it was only ever a herald of what was to follow.

The storms; titanic, monstrous and wholly unnatural, sweeping across the mainland and leaving scenes of unprecedented destruction in their wake.

The lights; powerful aurorae which shone dazzlingly forth from the upper atmosphere.

And then, without fail, the second shadow; a vast, cosmic nothingness that laid itself out across the world like a blanket, ushering in an endless night. Afterwards, there would come a Jarring, and, no matter what Max tried, time would never move a single step beyond that point.

Nobody ever figured it out. Not one of the scientists, philosophers, academics or intellectuals of the future ever managed to determine the nature of the cataclysm, and it was only thanks to the physicists that it was linked to time at all. For the majority of people, it simply happened - a vast, incomprehensible event that concluded with the fragmentation of reality itself. As the world changed around her, every few moments marking the passage of a season, Max considered the event with a kind of detached numbness. She could not even begin to imagine what could have caused it, but the fact that time came to a standstill at the same moment it all concluded was reason enough for her to believe it was related to her powers. She and Chloe had spoken about it at length: sometimes in the diner at the Two Whales; sometimes beside the ruins of the Lighthouse; sometimes in Chloe's room. Always, Max had been afloat in time, reliving a past that she already knew inimitably intimately.

That was the thing about being able to travel into the past that she found most unsettling; the feeling of detachedness and distance. Knowing everything that someone is about to say, and everything that is about to - or could - happen, made it very easy to become aloof. At times, she had worried about it, wondering if she was using people as means to ends that she already knew were going to occur. When she felt like that, she found Chloe - somewhere, somehow in time - and confided in her. That always made her feel happy. More importantly, though, it made her feel human again.

 _Blackwell Dormitory._ The scene of the crowd gathered, frozen, in front of the double doors swept across her sight in the blink of an eye, and she _felt_ it. It was hard to explain, but there was a _resistance_ there. It was as if the moment itself was magnetised, intent on capturing the attention of whomever might be watching. In many ways, it was like a whirlpool: to leave it behind, you really needed to swim against the current. Concentrating, Max closed her eyes, focusing on rolling back the hands of time, second by trying second. Every time she felt a Jarring, it took a substantial effort to push through it.

 _Find the next one, Max._

Ignoring her own mounting fear, she pushed her powers harder, increasing the speed at which she was regressing through the world's history. Keeping her eyes tightly closed, she tried to focus on what she knew: on the people that she was trying to save; the world that she was trying to protect.

 _Find it._

Everything began to tremble. A low, ever-present rumble filled her ears, heat pooling beneath her nose as warm blood trickled forth. As a wave of dizziness passed through her, she tried to ignore it, desperately searching for something that she did not even know existed. Her body and mind protested, straining beneath the weight of time, but all Max could do was try to push through it.

There had to be another one. This was her only option; the only avenue she had yet to explore. If there was not another Jarring, she was all out of ideas.

Then, just when she thought she was going to lose consciousness, she sensed it approaching. She could feel the years racing by, even if her eyes were not open to watch them pass. Centuries rolled across her shoulders, followed by eons, millennia…

And without warning, it all stopped.

* * *

The world was deathly silent when Max woke up. Groaning, she rolled quickly onto her back, her vision blurring as she looked up dazedly towards an unfamiliar sky. Streams of amber light drifted lazily between the clouds, forming a vague, glimmering layer. Breathing heavily, her heart thundering in her chest, she lay completely still, stunned that she had been able to make the journey.

Every bone and muscle in her body ached, as if she had recently run a marathon. Wincing, she tried to lift her arms, only for a deep sense of nausea to settle in her stomach. For a long time, she struggled simply to maintain consciousness, and it was only when something caught in the back of her throat that she was able - purely on reflex - to sit up straight, coughing and choking. As she bent double, gagging at the sight of her blood spattering against the lush, green grass, she somehow managed to retain enough awareness to realise that everything was covered in the same golden glow as the clouds. Wherever she was, she was caught in the grip of a Jarring.

Moaning, Max raised a trembling hand to her forehead, and then - with a huge effort - forced herself to her feet, trying to ignore her unsteady legs. Once upright, she stifled a swearword.

Clearly, she was a long way from Arcadia Bay. In fact, there were no signs of civilisation at all. Overhead, a blue bird hung immobile, its eyes staring unseeingly ahead, and nearby, a vast forest - much denser and more forbidding than any Max had ever seen - stood frozen, caught in a wind that she could not even feel. Currently, she was standing on a large, untended plain of grassland. Wherever the ocean had gone, it had left no trace of itself behind.

"Don't panic, Max," she muttered to herself, her words sounding unnatural in the quiet.

This was just another moment. Yes, it might well be older than any of the memories that she had seen to date, but in the end it was just another slice of time.

The pulse caught her by surprise.

"Holy-" she exclaimed, as a jolt seemed to pass through the fabric of reality. For an instant, the whole world seemed to shiver, a faint and sonorous boom echoing in her bewildered ears. There was a pause, and then - as Max listened incredulously - it came again. "What the hell…?"

She cast about. It had emanated from somewhere nearby.

 _BOOM._ Like a rallying drum…

There.

Feeling oddly entranced, Max wandered across the grass, her eyes focused on a single, inconspicuous patch of earth. There was nothing special about it that she could see from afar, but each time the pulse came she had the sudden and overwhelming sense that something was calling to her; something, perhaps, that had been calling out to her for a very long time.

The noise stopped when she reached her destination. Her brow creased as she looked down at the ground, wondering what she was supposed to make of what she was seeing.

It was small - no larger than any crystal that she had seen in Warren's chemistry class - but flawlessly symmetrical. As she stooped down next to it, feeling numb as she considered the ramifications of what she was seeing, Max reached out a hand to pick it up, but then thought better of it. The triangular pyramid shone in the light of the frozen sun, its every glass facet immaculately smooth.

"It was you, huh?" she murmured aloud, and - immediately - knew on instinct that it was true. There could be no doubting that it was the source of the pulse. Reflecting on the Jarrings, she added, "I guess… you've been… protecting me?"

Time had frozen every time that she had been in danger. For a long time, she had thought that it had been her instincts causing it to happen, but had eventually discounted that idea. The Jarrings happened even when she was not aware of any approaching threat, meaning something else had to be behind them. It was that fact that had prompted her to search for more of them; to hunt for the initial cause. Why had she been unable to rewind during Kate's rooftop plea? And why was her own death so intolerable to time itself? These were questions that needed answers. Warren had called them anomalies.

Max's fingers shook as she reached out to the object again. There was only one way to find out what was going on. If something had been calling out to her across all of time and space, it had to be powerful.

"What the hell are you?" she whispered fervently, as the tips of her fingers touched the surface of the pyramid.

Lights exploded dazzlingly in front of her eyes, as if in response to her question. In the blink of an eye, the green grassland around her was transformed, swept seamlessly aside as the world changed. Suddenly, she was looking out across a darker landscape, lightning streaking across a black velvet sky as rain surged down from the liberated heavens. As a loud peal of thunder echoed in Max's astonished ears, her clothes becoming rapidly sodden, she turned on the spot, scarcely able to believe what she was seeing.

Because scrap metal lay everywhere, mixed with a familiar muddle of broken appliances, cracked green bottles, and abandoned, badly rusted vehicles. Somehow, it was - without question - Arcadia Bay's junkyard. Somehow, she had returned to somewhere close to the present day, if there was such a thing.

Bewildered, Max stood on the spot, wondering what to do.

Until: "Hello, Max."

The voice was unfamiliar, but female.

"I wondered if you would ever reach this place."

Max turned, just in time to see the triangular pyramid glitter against the night sky, tumbling end over end until it fell back into its owner's hand. When she saw who that owner was, she went numb.

It was impossible.

Rachel Amber smiled wanly as she sat on her own grave, casually tossing the glass object back into the air and catching it again. Her eyes never left Max's face, however, her breath misting faintly in the cold. She seemed completely at ease - absurdly calm and contented in the face of everything that Max had thought to have understood. Her blonde hair was matted to her head, as if she had been sitting there for a while. It was almost as if she had been waiting.

"That's impossible," Max stammered eventually, finding her voice. "You're- you're-"

"Dead?" Rachel's eyebrows shot up, her grin stretching wider. "When? Anyway, that's not important right now. We have a lot to talk about."

"We- we do?"

"Of course," Rachel said, standing up. "After all, how else are we going to save the world?" At Max's ensuing expression, she stifled a chuckle. "Oh, come on. It's like you've seen a ghost!"

"But… you're dead," Max spluttered. It seemed important to emphasise that point.

"Not yet." Balancing the glass pyramid in the palm of her hand, Rachel jerked her head to indicate that Max should join her. "Come on, get over here. You want answers, right?"

"What is… that?"

"This is the Worldmaker, but we'll get to that later." Rachel paused, eyeing Max levelly. "Don't you want to know what's behind all this? Don't you want to see what you've been fighting all this time?"

"Fighting? Of course, but…"

"Come with me, then," the blonde girl interrupted. "I want to show you something."

"Show me what?"

"Like I said, I'll _show_ you." Rachel grinned widely again. "It's time to take a trip down the rabbit hole, Max."


	4. Chapter 4 - Objects in Time

Rachel never said how far they would be going. In the end, she never had to. As strange lights bloomed in front of Max's eyes, merging with the walls of the tunnel, Max thought she glimpsed objects amid them. Planets gave way to galaxies, which themselves gave way to snapshots of distant worlds; some with landscapes so alien that she wondered if they were the products of her imagination. She did not know what their ultimate destination would be, but guessed it was far enough away as to render any measure of distance meaningless.

Dark blue light blended with black, flickering incessantly in the enclosed space. Ahead, Rachel stood unmoved and unsurprised, the glass object that she had called the Worldmaker held lightly between the thumb and index finger of her right hand. For the moment, she was turned away, staring ahead towards the end of the tunnel that the pyramid had conjured into being. Eyeing her somewhat warily, Max contemplated who she really was. Clearly, there was far more to her than the face that had been plastered on wanted posters all across Arcadia Bay; more to her than Frank, Nathan, Jefferson, or even Chloe had ever realised. Her death had been a mystery, but her life - obviously, her life was a much deeper, more sinuous enigma.

"How did you know who I was?" Max asked. They could start with that.

There was a small pause. "Chloe told me about you," Rachel answered eventually. "She had a lot of stories."

"A lot of them are about you," Max replied, a little surprised at the undercurrent of accusation in her own voice. "I- I guess you're not what anyone thought you were." Looking around at the churning walls of the tunnel, she shivered. "Not at all…"

Rachel was quiet again for a while, before saying, "I suppose I deserve that. Still, none of it was a lie. I tried to be what everyone wanted me to be. I really did want to be a model, you know?"

Max let out a hollow laugh. "It's a bit hard to believe, when you're standing there with that… whatever that is."

"The Worldmaker," Rachel said, even more softly. "'Sci-fi bullshit' I guess Chloe would call it. I can almost hear her."

"But you never told her about any of this? Again, whatever the hell 'this' actually is…"

"'This' might be your present and future, Max, but… it's my past." She looked suddenly downcast. "A very long and complicated past. I thought I could get away with it, I suppose. I just wanted to stop playing this game. Theres too much interfering in time and the workings of the world…" She tailed off, before adding, "In retrospect, I was being naive, but is it so bad for me to want to escape it all? In the end, it just felt… well, hopeless."

"Why?"

"You'll understand soon enough."

And as if on cue, the motion of the tunnel halted, the lights which had been sailing past slowing to a sudden stop. Suddenly, Max found herself standing in what seemed to be a vast planetarium, stars of many colours twinkling in a black and seamless firmament. Clouds of dust - the remnants of ancient supernovae - surrounded her, merging with the stars to become a background of staggering size and majesty. Dizzy, Max swayed for a moment, struggling to maintain what little composure she still had.

"Come on," Rachel said, stepping into the light at the end of the tunnel. "We're here."

They stepped out onto an alien world. As the first blast of dust struck Max squarely in the face, she recoiled quickly, throwing an arm up to block the warm, desertic air. Staggering backwards, she looked up - and almost passed out at the sight above her. It was a cloudless night, and so the colossal galactic band gleamed, unprecedentedly detailed, against the black sky. Worse - however - and the true source of her sudden vertigo, were the planetary rings, which could be seen with the naked eye.

She was not on earth. She was probably not even in the Milky Way. With the wind roaring in her ears, Max shrank to the ground, trembling with a new type of panic; the panic of a lone traveller, lost in a gigantic and unfathomable universe.

Terrified beyond words, she felt Rachel's hand come to rest gently against one of her shoulders.

"I know." The other girl sounded strangely weary. "I understand. But we have to keep going."

Numb, Max held onto Rachel's arm with a vicelike grip, as if it were her only tether to normality. Keeping her eyes on the whispering desert ahead, she leant her head against her guide's shoulder, trying to control her own breathing; to get a grip on a situation she did not understand. In this position, she allowed herself to be led onward. In truth, she doubted she could have resisted.

"Y-you weren't kidding about the rabbit hole…"

"I'm sorry, Max, but this is the reality of your power," Rachel said quietly. "As long as you have it, you will walk these kind of paths. Stop," she commanded, halting abruptly. "Look up."

"I c-can't. I-"

"Look up, Max. It's starting."

Legs trembling, Max forced herself to turn her gaze up towards the sky again. There, on the dazzling heights, was surely the sight that Rachel had hoped to show her. The stars that had shone so vibrantly were blinking out of existence, like candles snuffed out by some interstellar wind. A coldness that was somehow more than a mere absence of heat settled in her skin, and Max shivered, knowing that she was looking at the same phenomenon that she had glimpsed so many times already: the darkness at the end of time.

"The shadow…" she said. Rachel nodded slowly.

"That's right. For a long time, I called it the Fade, and it's the first stage."

"The first stage of what?"

"Of the approach," Rachel murmured. "The approach of the beast."

She paused, and Max shivered again. "What beast?"

Looking at Rachel, she saw that the other girl's eyes were alive with sombre recognition. There was a wry smile on her lips, however.

"Nobody knows. Or at least, I never found anyone who knew. But I learnt enough. There is something coming, Max; something swimming between the stars, carried to us across the deep spaces. It is a nightmare, and this is only the beginning. The Fade signals that the world has fallen into its domain."

"W-what do you mean it's only the beginning…?"

"You have seen the rest," Rachel said gravely. "Or at least, you saw them as they appeared on earth. The storms; the lights… you know what happens."

"And it's all…" Max struggled to get her head around it. "It's all some… creature, or something?"

"It is the stages of the beast. The four stages that I could never complete." Rachel bowed her head. "I… couldn't do it. I couldn't save everyone, and that's the only way that the world itself can be saved. You see, Max," She held up the Worldmaker. "It's strange, but this is the only thing that's ever protected us. We all owe our lives a hundred times over to this little pyramid. Those who, in another time, lived here on this planet," she added, "created the Worldmaker to defend themselves from the beast, which even they couldn't beat. It destroyed them, but the Worldmaker lived on, fighting it at every juncture of its journey. It is our only chance."

"It… how? What does it do?"

"It allows us to visualise the stages. It creates a separate timeline and lets us fight them directly. In that new world, the four stages are very real and tangible trials: the Fade; the Dream; the Prison; and the Storm. Whatever this thing is, Max - and no, I don't know what it truly is - it is a creature of time, and we must fight it in time. The Worldmaker granted its powers to me, because it thought I was strong enough, but… I'm not." Her eyes were hard when she looked at Max. "You are. I've seen it, in your face and in Chloe's. She believes in you. If anyone can win, you can. That's why I gave them to you."

For a long moment, Max's heart went still in her chest. And then, she asked hoarsely, "You… gave them to me? You mean… my powers…?"

Rachel nodded sombrely, the wind of a foreign planet tousling her hair. "I guess… this was my Hail Mary. The Worldmaker is a bit like an anchor. The ties you share with Chloe, your friends, your family… are very real, Max. These relations - causal and otherwise - transcend individual timelines, branching through spacetime to form vast and complex structures. To a creature capable of manipulating time, such things are more than four-dimensional objects: when empowered, they represent _obstacles._ But… I couldn't ever retain mine."

Struggling with the jargon, Max shook her head, feeling helpless. It was difficult for her to reconcile the picture of Rachel that she had gleaned from Chloe with the figure that was standing in front of her, speaking so calmly and matter-of-factly about terrifying space monsters and incomprehensible objects created by extinct civilisations. Bewildered, she turned away, taking a moment to try and clear her head. As she stared into the distance, gazing across endless dunes of untraveled sand, she found it a difficult task to accomplish.

"So what are you saying I need to do?" she heard herself ask.

Rachel was quiet for a moment. "You have to beat the stages," she replied eventually. "And…" Max heard her hesitate. "Like I said, this is sort of my Hail Mary. I couldn't do it, and… I'm not certain, but I think this is the last time that the Worldmaker will work."

"What does that mean? The stages?"

"The Fade; the Dream; the Prison; and the Storm. The stages of the approach."

"And this is all in some… other reality?"

Rachel made a soft noise of assent. "Yeah. In the world that the Worldmaker creates."

"And how do I pass these stages? What do I have to do?"

This time, there was no response. After a while, Max turned back around, wondering if she had not heard the question. The haunted look on the face of Rachel Amber took her by surprise, tugging at the strings of a very deep and primal fear that lay coiled somewhere in the darkest recesses of Max's chest.

Loss. There was no mistaking it: it was the expression of someone who had been bereft of hope.

"Survive. Like I said, Max, you just have to save everyone. That's it." Rachel's voice was hollow. "Keep your friends alive, and preserve the obstacle. If you do this, you will reach the end, and… well, by then you will understand."

"So… I just have to keep everyone alive?"

It sounded simple enough, but Max was under no illusions. After all, she had never managed it. In the end, time always seemed to demand a sacrifice.

"That's right," Rachel said wearily. "Just keep everyone alive through the Fade, the Dream, the Prison, and the Storm. Do that, and we might actually be able to stop this thing."

"And… what happens if I don't? What if I can't do it?"

Rachel smiled sadly. "Well, like I said, I couldn't. I failed with my chances. If we run out…" She tailed off, looking out across the dunes, her expression unfathomable. "The darkness will consume the earth, as it has devoured so many worlds before ours."

Cold and afraid, Max looked up at the sky again, watching as the stars vanished before her eyes. Her hands shook at her sides, despite the unusual warmth in the air.

"How-" She stuttered. "How can I f-face something like that alone? I'm just… I'm just a photographer! The only thing I've ever done with these powers is screw things up and now you want me to go to some other… _dimension_ or something, and get through these four stages I know nothing about?! There's no way it'll ever work!"

Rachel's face was deadpan. "Well, there's a reason it's a Hail Mary. And besides, you won't be alone. Like I said, you have to save them all, so you have to take them with you. We have to draw the beast into the other world. To proceed, it has to unravel the links: dismantle the structure that the Worldmaker builds. It will follow you."

With the weight of dread settling on her shoulders, Max nodded. "OK, I… kinda understand. It's big, but I- I'll try. I have these powers so… I have to, right?"

Again, Rachel smiled; again wryly. "You don't have to, Max," she murmured. "Nobody has to do anything. But I know you will." Looking up, she added, "We should go. Let's find your friends."

Following the gaze of her companion time traveller, Max saw that the sky was nearly black; almost every lone light now extinguished. Soon, for as wide and far as the human eye could see, there would only be darkness. When the sun on the other side of the planet vanished into the abyssal ether, it would leave behind only an eternal, absolute night. Troubled, she looked away.

"Quickly," she heard herself mumble. "Let's leave quickly."

But even when Rachel had called the Worldmaker's powers to bear once more, setting them on a course to more familiar surroundings, the feeling of unease stayed with her, lingering in her heart like some unshakable ague.

* * *

 **A/N: Thanks for reading :)**


	5. Chapter 5 - Links and Chains

_Think of it like building a chain, Max. You need the individual links, right, and you need them all to be connected for it to work? We're building the same thing, only the links in our chain are our lives and the lives of our friends._

 _And our chain is the only thing holding time together._

* * *

The rain thundered down, drumming heavily against the concrete parking lot that lay just adjacent to Blackwell Academy. In the dark of the evening, with the hood of her jumper drawn up and over her head, Max found herself waiting, wondering when Warren was planning to show himself. Class was out but - as she had discovered several times before - it was easy to become distracted en route to meeting someone. There were always other things to do: posters to examine; people to speak to. Still, she was early, and - if she were being honest with herself - she wasn't really expecting him to be late. He was never late to meet her, after all.

The thought brought with it a slight twinge of guilt. Of course, she knew how he felt about her. Again, if she were being honest, it was obvious. Letting her breath out in a steady stream, Max closed her eyes briefly. How did she feel about it?

Complicated question. Was 'I don't know' an acceptable answer?

Probably not.

"Hey Max!"

Jolted out of her thoughts, Max looked up quickly, just in time to see the object of her thoughts jogging towards her through the vague glow of an amber streetlight. His navy jeans and black t-shirt marked him as someone who was well-accustomed to acting as nondescript as possible.

"Hey Warren!" she called back. "Aren't you… cold?"

"Way cold," he gasped, as he slowed to a stop in front of her. "Hey, can we get out this rain?" Peering around her, he said, "Maybe under that tree over there? The weather's been crazy today. The Principal had to call in some people to fix the roof because stuff was falling…" He tailed off, peering at her with squinted eyes. "Hey, are you alright? You look a bit…"

"Listen, this is going to sound crazy," Max said rapidly. "Maybe it is crazy." She took a deep breath. "I… found Rachel." Warren's eyes widened. "Rachel Amber."

"What?!"

"Yeah. I know."

"Well… I mean, did you go to the police or something? What- where did you… find her?"

"It doesn't matter," Max replied. "It's just, I- she said I have to do something. She said it's the only way-"

"Max." Warren put his hands on her shoulders, steadying her. She had not even realised how much she had been shaking. In truth, fear was the only emotion that she had feeling for some time now. "What are you talking about? I feel like I'm missing something pretty major. Are you alright?" He peered at her intently. "Chloe didn't give you any of her… supplies, right?"

Max blinked. It took her a moment to understand his allusion. "Wh- no!" she spluttered. "I'm not high!"

"Alright." He leant back, accepting it immediately. "So what's going on then?"

Feeling disarmed, Max shook her head. "I- I can't explain. Not yet. There's no time. She said the first stage would begin really soon. Warren, I need your help to find like… I don't know, five people or something that I'm… _linked_ to somehow. Apparently this thing," she said, pulling the Worldmaker out of her pocket, "can show me the way to them. You're one, but I don't know who the others are…"

Warren was staring at the Worldmaker, completely oblivious to what she was saying. "Max, what is… that?"

"Warren!"

"Sorry." He shook his head quickly, as if trying to jolt himself out of a trance. "Right, so you're… looking for some people. Who are they?"

"Let's get inside first. You're right, it's horrible out here."

By the time that they made it inside the school, they were both soaking wet. Discarding her jumper, Max rolled her shoulders back, trying to relax. Her pink vest top was light and thin, but she still felt constricted. Within the building, the classrooms were darkened and deserted, but here - on this strange night somewhere between times - thankfully, there was nobody around to complain about their presence.

"Are you going to tell me what's happening, then?" Warren asked, concerned, one hand coming to rest reassuringly against her upper back. "And I don't mean, 'Hey Warren, we need to go over here and do this and do that.' I mean are you going to actually try explaining what's happening with you?"

Leaning against a nearby wall, she closed her eyes, rubbing her forehead wearily. She was tired, but resting was out of the question. "I will, I promise. But right now, I can't. I've texted Chloe… I know she'll be one of the people I need to find, but it's the others…"

Looking at the Worldmaker, Max shuddered. She already felt overwhelmed, and Warren's curiosity was serving only to solidify just how much she _didn't_ know about what Rachel had told her to do. Meanwhile, the strange glass pyramid was growing warm, meaning that one of the people that she was looking for was nearby.

She did not need a million guesses to determine which.

"Caulfield!" The doors to the school burst open, unleashing a wave of blue hair, rain and profanity. "What the fuck? Why do we have to meet here?"

"Chloe!" Unable to restrain herself, Max breached the distance between them in a matter of moments, throwing her arms around her friend's neck. "It's so good that you're here," Swallowing a lump in her throat, she continued: "I really needed to hear your voice…"

"Woah." Chloe's comically muffled voice emanated from the vicinity of Max's right shoulder. "Quite a grip you have there, Max."

"Sorry."

Stepping back, Max saw that Chloe was staring directly at her, brow furrowed and eyes narrowed in concern. "Now, you're going to tell me why you just bear hugged me, right now. I can see you're panicking, Caulfield. Don't even try to lie to me. Is it about… you know?"

"Y-yeah." Looking around guiltily, she saw that Warren was staring at her in confusion. Shit. Whenever they were right now, she had not yet told him about her time travel powers. "Listen Chloe, you know how I… can wind back time?"

"'Course," Chloe replied automatically.

"Wait, wind back what?" Warren asked incredulously, perfectly on-cue.

"Time," Max repeated. She was planning an abridged version of the reveal.

Once again, he stared at her as if she was crazy. "Max, that's- what?"

"Think of a number between one and a billion."

Warren did a double-take. "Between one and- wait, _what?"_

"One and a billion, Warren. Come on!"

He stared at her. "Fine… I guess… 787,345,922."

Extending her hand, Max took a few steps backwards on her personal timeline.

"Fine… I guess-"

"787,345,922," Max finished.

Warren's look of stunned disbelief was all that Max needed to determine that yes, he had got the point.

Returning her attention to Chloe, she found her wincing. "Ouch. Way to hit him with it, like, right in the face. Boom."

"Both of you, listen. Everything that's been happening has been because something is getting closer. And I'm not talking about the storm," Max said in a rush. She could not afford to waste a single moment. "I'm talking about something worse - some kind of force or something - that's approaching the planet. All these strange things that have been happening, like the eclipse and the double moon… they're all because it's almost here. And Chloe… I found Rachel." At her friend's name, Chloe's eyes went wide. "She's… she's like me. She's a time traveller. I think she was the first, and we're only seeing all these things because she couldn't fix what started them. Chloe… that's why I have my powers. She gave them to me…"

After that, there was silence, save for the monotonous sound of the rain outside entreating entry to the school. Chloe was stunned; slack-jawed with disbelief. Taking deep breaths, Max leant against the wall again, waiting for the verdict. She almost wanted one of them to call her a liar; to give her even the slightest hint of hope that she was wrong, and Rachel the time traveller had been nothing more than the vivid construct of an overactive photographer's imagination.

In the end: "If this is true…" Warren began slowly. It was obvious that he was sceptical, but he seemed to have recovered from his shock somewhat. "What does this… thing… want?"

"She- she doesn't know," Max conceded. "She just… knows what happens when it gets here."

"Rachel told you this?" Chloe asked, her voice hoarse. "Rachel… my Rachel?"

Max looked up at her friend, remembering the sight of Rachel's body buried beneath the junkyard; victim of Nathan and Jefferson's perverse partnership. It was a sight which had haunted her dreams and - if the look of desperate hope on Chloe's face was to be believed - she was not the only person to have been so deeply and terribly affected.

With only a few words, she could banish the pain.

"Yes," she whispered. "She's alive. I don't know how, but she's out there somewhere, Chloe. She's lost in time, just like I am…"

There were tears in the blue-haired girl's eyes as she swayed, reeling as if intoxicated. "That…" she began, voice uncharacteristically tremulous, " _punk!_ She's out there?! Somewhere in…" Chloe paused, turning away quickly as her voice cracked, "somewhere safe? _Shit…_ " She rubbed a sleeve hastily across her eyes. "I should have known! Everyone always leaves me, after all. I should have expected that she wouldn't let something like getting k-killed stop her from getting out this freaking town! Damn it…"

"Chloe…"

"I'm alright." Straightening up and turning back around, Chloe drew a shuddering breath. "Listen Max, this is all… just insane, and there's no way I can even begin to get my head around it right now, let alone believe it. But there's no way I'm leaving your side anyway, so I guess it doesn't really matter." She shrugged, smiling winningly. "Hey, at least you have your fan club over here," she said, gesturing towards Warren. "He'll believe anything you say, and we all know why that is…"

"Hey!" Warren protested.

"Oh come on, don't act like its not true…"

"Chloe, play nice," Max said, pained.

"Ugh, alright. So are you going to tell us what we need to do?"

"Before that…" Nervously, Max looked from Chloe to Warren and back again. "Let me just ask… do either of you know where you are?"

There was silence. The two exchanged glances.

"Uh… Blackwell Academy, Max." Warren looked confused. "Arcadia Bay?"

"What he said," Chloe muttered.

"Yeah, but I mean… do either of you know how you got here? And I'm not talking in general, I mean this moment: right now. Do you know how you got here?" She paused, considering her next words. "Let me put it a different way… what time is it right now? What happened earlier today?"

"Earlier today?" Chloe's eyebrows shot up. "I was just…" She halted mid-sentence, a light frown creasing her forehead. "I mean, I was… before you texted, I…" Her eyes widened. "What the hell! What the hell was I doing? Shit!"

Warren had gone pale. "Max," he murmured slowly, "why can't I remember anything?"

"Don't panic," she said hurriedly. "Rachel said this would happen. It's the Worldmaker: the crystal. It's pulling us into another reality. This world we're in right now… it isn't real. It's just… a kind of vehicle, I guess. It's moving us from one time to another."

There was a moment of pause.

"So… we're moving sideways," Warren concluded suddenly. Max's brow furrowed with confusion.

"Huh?"

"In time. What you're saying… I guess it means time has two dimensions? One would be backwards and forwards in our own world, I guess, and the other would be sideways - from one timeline to another?"

"Alright, you're going to start talking in real English right now, or you're out," Chloe said flatly. Warren paled.

"I'm just saying, _if_ this is true…"

"It doesn't matter," Max interrupted hurriedly. "Look, it really doesn't matter what all the consequences are. Maybe you're right, I don't know. All that matters right now is moving on."

"To where?" Chloe folded her arms across her chest, watching Max appraisingly.

That was the real question. In truth, Max did not really know the answer. Rachel had told her to gather together the people to whom she was linked, but had refused to accompany her back through the portal to Arcadia Bay. She had said that she would meet them 'later' - but a word like that was worse than useless when applied to travelling through time. To Max, it was clear that she was hiding something. Whatever it was, she doubted it was anything good.

"The rain's stopped," Warren observed aloud. Jolted from her reverie, Max realised it was true. The sound of the downpour had gone, replaced with an empty, disconcerting silence.

"I guess," Max began uncertainly, "we should head… outside?"

It was at that point that a low, omnipresent rumbling began to build, rising up through the ground like the aftershock of some faraway earthquake. Staggering, Max put a hand on the wall as she found her balance, just in time to hear something slide off a shelf in the principal's office, shattering loudly on the floor.

"What's happening?" Chloe said, a note of real fear in her voice.

As the vibrations grew stronger, Max shook her head, watching with wide eyes as a fierce, bright light - growing ever more-intense - began to stream through the thin gaps surrounding the doors to the school. When she opened her voice to reply…

Pain. A lance of fire piercing her skull, like a red-hot poker thrust unceremoniously through her brain.

She screamed, or thought she did.

When the rain returned, it was not the same.

* * *

There was a storm outside, but it was not the storm that Max remembered. As she opened her eyes, her body feeling like a leaden weight, it took all of her strength not to drift back into unconsciousness. The pillow beneath her head was soft, and the heavy woollen duvet softer still. Overhead, a ceiling fan span mesmerically, humming lazily as the different rain rattled the nearby window. A single striplight bathed the room in sharp, sterile white, flickering with unpredictable infrequency.

"Miss Caulfield?" The female voice was calm and gentle. As the nurse moved into view, Max blinked at her dazedly. She was blonde and slender, with light, almost ethereally blue eyes. "Oh, wonderful, you've rejoined us! Things were looking a little worrying for a moment there…" She lifted a clipboard from a nearby table, scribbling down some notes with elegant ease. She smiled suddenly. "Still, glad to see you're looking alright now!"

"Chloe…" Max moaned, finding her voice hoarse from disuse. The nurse's brow furrowed with concern.

"Now now, don't worry." She smiled again. "Your friends are both fine. Now, we don't know _exactly_ what you must have been exposed to, but you all seem to have had the same reaction to some form of external stimuli. In other words…" The nurse sighed quietly. "We _think_ you must have had a seizure of some kind. But you honestly mustn't worry; our scans haven't detected any underlying issues…"

"I was in school…"

The nurse looked surprised. "In school?" She laid a hand on Max's shoulder. "I'm afraid that's not possible. You see, all the schools in the city are closed."

City? It took an exceptional effort, but Max shook her head. "Black… well."

Looking sympathetic, the nurse smiled again - this time sadly. "That can't be, I'm sorry to say. The storm has cut the power. It's been like this as long as anyone can remember. It's quite surreal…" Abruptly, she straightened up. "You don't recall?"

Swallowing, Max attempted to push herself upright, succeeding only in making herself see stars. "N-no," she managed.

"How very strange. We weren't expecting amnesia and, well…" She laughed aloud. "I mean, it's extraordinary that you don't even remember the Fade!"

Max's blood went cold in her veins. "F-fade?" she stuttered.

"Yes, that's right." Suddenly, all the warmth that had been in the nurse's face vanished, replaced by a cold and terrifying detachedness. "That's what everyone calls it. You see, Max, all the lights have gone out."

Another burst of radiance burnt suddenly and brilliantly in front of Max's eyes. She only turned away for a moment, but when she looked back the nurse had disappeared. As she sat up, gathering the blankets around her, Max found the hospital transformed. In the blink of an eye, it had turned cold and dark; lit only by the moonlight streaming through the window behind her. Above, the ceiling fan had stopped.

Shivering in her bed, her heart pumping rapidly, Max listened hard: but there was nothing.

Nothing except her, the room, and the rain.

* * *

 **A/N: Hello again :) a new chapter for a new year :)**


	6. Chapter 6 - Distant Cities

Outside, the wind bayed, its every loud lamentation rattling the windows of the hospital. Within the dark confines of the building itself, the sound of it created the impression of fragility; each dark corridor seemingly primed for imminent and inevitable collapse.

It had been a long time since Max had visited a hospital, and she had never been the patient. Shuddering, making her way through the building's corridors by following the milky pools of light beneath each window, she found herself thinking about her time in Seattle; a portion of her life that now felt so far away that she struggled to believe that it had ever been real. Back then, when photography had been all that had mattered, time had been nothing but an abstract concept: interesting in its own way, probably, to those who cared to study it, but of no more significance to her than any number of other such concepts.

God, she had loved that city. As she crept down a narrow, claustrophobic passageway, feeling her way along the wall in a blind search for doorframes, Max closed her eyes, trying to imagine that she was back at the top of the Space Needle, a camera in her hand and the heat of the sun on her neck as she looked out across the skyline, feeling again that rare and fleeting sense of absolute, unfettered freedom. Back then, she and her parents had often travelled west into the unblemished beauty of the Washington National Park; and she could remember, still, the excitement of gazing out across those majestic, snowcapped landscapes from the backseat of the family car. Often, they had travelled all the way to the coast, where the vast, nigh-boundless Pacific lumbered to-and-fro, stretching often longingly inland like some strange and enthralled leviathan.

It might have been a million miles away. As her hand finally found a door, she realised, with a jolt of fear, that it was probably farther.

The door swung open, and - peering inside - she breathed a sigh of relief. Inside, two beds had been set up, partitioned by some thin, green plastic curtains. It looked to be a waiting room of some kind, and there were several stainless steel trays of medical tools balanced on wooden tables nearby. A bank of computers - smothered in dust - stood against one of the walls, the displays flickering as strange symbols, diagrams and charts passed haphazardly across them. If they had a function, it was beyond Max's understanding.

Her eyes having now adjusted to the gloom, she was able to see that the beds' inhabitants bore familiar faces. Both Chloe and Warren were fast asleep, and despite the situation Max stifled a laugh. She had never seen Chloe's face looking so untroubled. As she reflected on that fact some more, the smile slowly slipped from her face.

"Chloe! Warren!" she hissed, creeping closer. "Wake up!"

There was a low groan, and then: "Max?" Chloe sounded drowsy and confused. "What… the hell…"

"Come on, we need to get out of here," Max said fervently, looking around at the open door. She turned her attention to Warren. "Come on!"

"Alright, alright, I'm- I'm getting up," Warren mumbled. Briefly, she felt like a nagging parent.

"Quickly. We have to get going-"

"OK." Chloe held up a hand. "That's enough, Caulfield. No more dragging us around. I want to know what we're doing right now. This is already confusing enough, without you doing your thing…"

Max opened her mouth to argue. She wanted to tell them that there was no time; that this whole venture was, in many ways quite literally, a race against time. They could not afford to delay for a moment, not even if that moment was used to explain the whole complex tapestry underlying the race itself. Too much was at stake.

But Chloe's obstinate glare forced her to pause, and when she turned to Warren she found him similarly hard-faced.

"Al-alright," she conceded heavily. "Listen…"

So she told them everything as quickly as she could, starting at the very beginning for Warren's benefit. By the time she had finished explaining the journey that she had made with Rachel to the other world, his eyes were wide and stunned. Even Chloe looked suitably awed at the notion of travelling to another galaxy in order to observe the dying of stars. For a long moment afterwards, there was silence, until Chloe let out a slow breath.

"So this is… the Fade, right? This is…"

"I think so." Max nodded. "I saw a nurse earlier, before everything went black. That's what she called it. The Worldmaker… it does exactly what it says. It makes worlds. For us, the Fade is just something that happens to the stars, but I think that in here it's something… closer. Something we can prevent."

"I think I get it." Warren sounded confident. His eyes were shining with interest. "The whole world is designed to make it possible to fight against the Fade. I guess it's like if I wanted to fight my own shadow, or something. It's impossible in the real world, but maybe… maybe it's not impossible to create a world where it could happen." His expression sobered a little. "But… Max, how are we going to get back?"

It was a question that Max had hoped not to answer immediately. After all, Rachel had warned her about it. Covering her face with her hands, she sighed shakily.

"I don't know," she murmured. It was the truth. "All I know is, we need to beat this thing or we lose everything."

There was a long pause.

"Oh." She hated how small Warren's voice sounded. When she looked at him, she saw that he seemed downcast, his hands fidgeting with the bedsheets. "It's just… I mean, won't we need help? From someone?"

"Pull yourself together, dude," Chloe snapped, but even Max could tell her heart was not completely in it.

"There's nobody," she replied. They both looked at her, but Max couldn't meet their eyes. "We've got to do this on our own. There's nobody that can help us. Not even Rachel. Not yet."

After that, the mood was sombre. For a short while, they stayed in the room, Chloe and Warren recovering from the revelation that they would not be returning home any time soon, and Max sitting heavy-heartedly in an office chair beside the computers. She felt terrible: she had dragged them out of their own lives, after all, and wherever they were right now, it was almost certainly dangerous. Having travelled through time for a while, Max herself was a little numb to extraordinary happenings; after all, travelling through time was itself extraordinary, and there was only a small difference between travelling to another world and travelling to another time. She could only imagine how terrifying the transition must have been to Warren in particular, who had to be wondering what else he did not understand about the universe, given the existence both of time travel and other dimensions.

When they did leave the room, they wandered the silent, empty corridors of the dark hospital for a short time, eventually managing to make their way to the entrance by following a series of signs set onto the pale walls. With the hospital's interior lit only by moonlight streaming in through tiny windows, they were forced to move through near-darkness on more than one occasion, edging through the breathless silence like explorers charting a long-buried tomb. Outside, the rain continued unabated, often punctuated by the low rumble of distant thunder.

The glass doors leading outside were shut, water streaming down them in thin rivulets. Here, the air was fresher - and so startlingly, horrifyingly _real._ Max shivered. There was nothing to give away that this was a world that had only been constructed a few moments ago. If a created world could seem so disarmingly authentic, despite having the quality of a dream, what would happen if it became a nightmare?

Chloe threw her weight against the doors, shooing Warren away and - presently - eased them apart, allowing the wind and rain to surge inside. Buffeted by the strong breeze, Max held up a hand, squinting out across the misty landscape beyond the walls of the hospital. They were on a street, across the road from a line of dim, empty shops whose goods seemed to exist solely as decoration. The road-facing windows were grey on the inside as if lined with dust, suggesting that wherever the rest of the population was, they had been gone for a very long time.

"It's a… city," Warren said, stunned.

And what a city it was: but it was nothing like Seattle. Standing on the stone steps outside, her hair rapidly becoming sodden, Max gazed silently up at the towering, monolithic structures that rose starkly into a bleak and barren sky. Skyscrapers and office buildings stood alongside one another, windows glinting eerily with every flash of lightning. In the darkness, neon lights glimmered from the highest heights of most, many of these lights illuminating strange and disconcerting billboards. The closest bore only a single word.

"'Home.'" Chloe articulated, and a tremor of horror passed through Max. For some reason, the word itself was enough to make her feel uneasy. "What does that mean? Weird…"

"There's nobody on the streets," Warren commented. "Maybe they're just sheltering or something. Hey…" He had caught sight of something. "Look at that!"

But Max had already seen it. Framed in the gap between two skyscrapers, she could see another word; this one set onto the wall of what looked to be an ordinary office building.

 _BLACKWELL_

"What do you think it means?" Chloe muttered. Max shook her head slowly.

"I have no idea. Maybe it's just a coincidence," she said, not really believing what she was saying.

"Can't even get away from that place when you go to another universe," Chloe commented sardonically. "Maybe it's a clue or something?"

"From the Worldmaker?" Max mumbled doubtfully. She reached into a pocket of her jeans and pulled it out. It lay cold and inert in her hands. "I don't know. I guess… maybe it could be?"

"Not exactly filling me with confidence here, Max."

"I can't help it, Chloe!" Helplessly, Max covered her face with her hands. "I… I don't know what's going on either! I'm just here, like you! I-"

"Hey!" Chloe's shout was both a reminder and a warning. "Don't start wimping out on us here, Caulfield. Me and whatshisface need you on top of your game if we're going to get through this."

Warren's forehead wrinkled. "My name's Warren…"

Chloe smiled sweetly. "That's great. Do you want a prize?"

As they bickered, Max gathered herself, her eyes set unwillingly on the Blackwell building. She wondered what it was all supposed to mean. Back in the real world, Blackwell was just a school; albeit a school with a dark underbelly and sinister secrets. There was nothing special about it, as far as she knew; no reason why it should have a counterpart anywhere, let alone in another universe.

What was she supposed to make of it? Maybe Chloe was right - maybe it was a clue of some sort.

"Maybe it's a warning."

She could not prevent the shout of surprise from leaving her lips, nor the spasm of horror that clutched at her heart. Spinning on the spot, she turned to face the person who had somehow crept up on them, petrified by the thought that something terrible - something she was not ready to face again - had somehow managed to break through the barrier between worlds, sneaking up on her just as easily as before…

Because it was Mr Jefferson's voice that she had heard.

And yet, behind her - the spot where she had heard the voice - there was… nothing. Just the glass doors to the hospital. But she was sure that she had heard it…

"Max, what's up?" Chloe sounded genuinely concerned. Whatever she and Warren had been arguing about, the discussion had been forgotten. Both of them were staring at her worriedly. "This is all super weird, but you're acting… strange. And," she clarified, as if she was being helpful, "it's not normal strange. I would be OK with that, but not whatever strange this is. You're starting to freak me out."

"Sorry." Max pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, taking a deep breath. She needed to clear her head. "I mean, I don't even know how long I've been awake. Even though I woke up in that bed, I didn't feel like I'd really _slept,_ you know?" When Chloe nodded sombrely, Max sighed again. "Everything's just happened so quickly. Too quickly for me to- to even react. All I know is, we've got to keep going, otherwise…"

"You need to sleep, Max." Warren's voice was quiet, but firm.

"I can't. I'll be alright, this is too important-"

"Max-"

"Warren!" Max could feel frustration swelling in her chest. "This is about life and death! This is about us surviving: us and the people we've left behind! Joyce, Brooke, Daniel, my parents, everyone in the world… they're all caught up in this and they don't even know! I can't stop for even a minute because if I do, nobody has a chance…!"

"So where do you want to go? Do you know what you should be doing? Do you have instructions?" Warren was looking at her impassively. Suddenly, Max found she could not meet his eyes.

"No, but… that Blackwell building has to be a good start…"

"Maybe," he replied quietly. "But you're going to have to rest sometime. It might as well be in a place that we're pretty sure is safe. Who knows what we might find over there? This way, we can hopefully set off when the rain has gone and there's a bit more light. Then, we can explore that building for as long as you want."

As he said that, however, he looked hesitatingly up at the sky. It did not show any sign that it would be clearing any time soon. Even so, Max felt defeated. She simply did not have the energy to argue any more.

"OK," she mumbled softly, turning around and stepping back into the hospital. Though far from warm, it was at least less cool than the outside. "Fine, you're right. What do you think would be a good place to- to rest, properly?"

"Well we know they have beds, Caulfield." Chloe's voice was uncharacteristically gentle as she put a hand on Max's back, guiding her forward. "You remember beds? Comfortable, soft places where people _sleep?_ Seriously though," Her expression grew serious all of a sudden. "I know you said you don't know, but… ballpark? How long have you been awake?"

Max realised, without much surprise, that she had absolutely no idea. She had jumped back and forth - and sideways - through time so much lately that she had not spent an extended duration in any one place. It would be no wonder if her sleep patterns were out of sync.

"Hard to measure…" she muttered. Chloe nodded sagely.

"Come on, let's find somewhere."

In the end, they chose a small room close to the reception area. It was little more than the size of a broom closet, framed by shelves holding small bottles and other anonymous medical supplies, but did feel a little more insulated than the other rooms. Without power, the hospital was becoming rapidly cooler, and it would not be long before they would be able to see each other's breaths. After dragging several sheets and blankets inside, they set up a makeshift cocoon and - once they had sorted out who was going to be sleeping where - settled down for the rest of the night.


	7. Chapter 7 - Blackwell Tower

They woke early, Max the first to open her eyes. Beneath the blanket, propped against a strong, unyielding stone wall, she felt warm and secure for the first time in a while. Outside its confines, however, the air had grown colder, and Max could feel the chill of it against her exposed face. Making a noise of dissatisfaction, she attempted to bury herself beneath the blanket, shifting closer to the source of warmth alongside her.

"Max?" Chloe asked in a quiet, sleepy voice. Max offered a soft sigh of assent. "Ugh, it's cold…"

The blanket shifted and - abruptly - slid away from Max's head. Although all the plans that they had made the day before were still relevant, and time remained of the essence, she could not help the groan of dismay that fell from her lips. For a moment, she had been able to pretend that she was back in Chloe's room, exhausted and barely liminal after a late-night sojourn to Blackwell Academy's swimming pool. Maybe she had been dreaming about that moment, or perhaps something that she had seen had reminded her of it. Maybe thinking about that was simply less distressing than contemplating what actually lay ahead.

Warren stirred nearby. "Oh, we're going?" he mumbled.

"Yeah," Max heard herself say. "Yeah I guess we are. Come on."

As they each stood up slowly on unsteady legs, he murmured in a faraway voice: "I had a strange dream. We were climbing a tower, only…" He looked at Max suddenly, a haunted expression on his face. "We didn't know how tall it was, and we didn't know where we were. Nothing was what it seemed, either. I remember…" He shuddered. "It felt evil. Like nothing I've ever thought about before. Max, I'm-"

He tailed off, and then looked away suddenly as if ashamed to meet her eyes. In the cold, empty storage room, Max shared a nervous glance with Chloe, who - for once - had nothing to say.

"There's no such thing as evil," Max said, trying to sound confident and reassuring. "Not a force like that anyway. People can be evil, but there's nothing out there that's actually _evil_ evil. It's not like light or something like that, where you can see it…"

"Maybe…" Warren shivered. He still did not seem able to look directly at her. "But…" he said hesitantly, "what if it's just that nobody has really seen it yet? Maybe it _is_ like light, but the source of it is so far away that we can't see it, you know? Like the light of the stars, only we never realised there was a star there at all…"

Max took a breath, steadfastly ignoring the prickling of fear on the back of her neck. "Just focus on the next bit, Warren. It's weird, but… it's better if you try to ignore everything else. If we think too much about it, we definitely won't make it."

It took a few moments, but he nodded eventually. "Alright," he said softly. "I'll try."

But as she looked at his bowed neck and his pale cheeks, Max realised that she had never before seen him looking so afraid.

* * *

If anything, the rain had grown stronger, and the light that they had hoped for was nowhere to be seen. The sky was covered with a dense barrier of cloud, and the earth by a pearlescent layer of milk-white mist. As they trudged through the city, walking down barren avenues and empty boulevards, Max pulled her hood back up over her head, concentrating on every step. Bodily, she felt better after the rest, but mentally - well, neither Warren's words nor the gloomy backdrop of the Fade had been particularly helpful. As the downpour continued, she kept thinking about the words that she was certain she had heard uttered the day before.

 _Maybe it's a warning._

She shuddered. What could it have meant?

Looking up at the Blackwell building, which loomed out of the mist like some spectral obelisk, Max did not find any answers. It just looked like a regular office, rigidly shaped and covered with dark windows. She wanted to believe that there was nothing special about it, but she could not ignore the palpable sense of unease that was growing in her chest. Something about it was repellent; wrong. By the looks of Chloe and Warren, they could feel it too.

"So why couldn't Rachel join us?" Chloe asked as they trudged down one abandoned street, her words almost lost to the rain. "Did she say what she was doing or anything?"

"She said she couldn't reach us here. Apparently she can't get to this place at all." Max realised she was chewing her lower lip nervously, so stopped. "Something about time, I guess. There's no-one else here, so maybe that applies to everyone. Maybe only we can get into this universe, or whatever?"

"So it's all empty?" Warren said. "This whole world, there's only us three here? Even on other planets and things, there's nothing? Forever?" He looked up and shivered suddenly. "Just… emptiness?"

"I don't know," Max replied honestly. "Maybe."

It was a sobering thought.

After a walk that seemed longer than it probably was, they reached the entrance to the office building, passing through a revolving door into the reception hall. The inside was lavish; white marble pillars rising up to a ceiling that seemed somehow too high. To either side of a central reception desk - also white marble - two doorways marked passages leading off into the building proper. The room had dim electric lamps, but was lit mostly by the ambient glow of the outside world, which streamed in through the large windows that stood adjacent to the main entrance. There was nothing there; just a few items of stationery balanced atop the desk. Before long, Max indicated to Chloe and Warren that they should move farther in.

Picking one corridor at random, they followed a plush black carpet through to a pair of glass elevators. Through and behind the transparent walls, Max could see that the rain in the rest of the Fade was continuing unabated, thundering down with apocalyptic fury. Seeing no alternative, she ushered the others inside and - because if nothing else, they would be able to see the full extent of the world around them - hit the top button, the doors sliding soundlessly shut in response.

As the elevator began to edge its way upwards, Chloe commented: "What's with all that marble? Whoever designed this place must have been a real hack. It looks like a museum or a tomb or something."

"I guess they wanted it to be imposing."

"It's super creepy. Reminds me of that teacher you had. Looks good from the outside, but inside," She shook her head grimly. "Rotten to the fucking core."

That was a subject to avoid. "Are you alright, Warren?" Max turned away from Chloe, because she had heard the light thump of him sinking against the handrail. Looking closer, she saw that his forehead was beaded with sweat and his eyes were wide. Alarmed, she put a hand on his shoulder. "What's wrong?"

He shook his head quickly, as if trying to clear it, but continued to take long, deliberately slow breaths as if he were trying to stop himself from panicking.

"This place," he muttered. "It feels really strange. It's like I can feel it, in my head… I don't even know how to describe it. There's something wrong about it. I know you can feel it too," he added, levelling a slightly accusatory stare at her, "even though you are trying to ignore it."

Max looked away, unwilling to admit to the feelings Warren was describing. "It's probably just the fact that we're here, you know? The situation's weird, so of course anything like this is going to feel strange. You just have to ignore it and keep going." She frowned. "That's what I've been doing for a long time now, really."

"Max…" Chloe's voice tugged at her attention.

"I've been using these powers for ages, Warren," Max continued, ignoring her for a moment. "There was so much going on at Arcadia Bay, and in the end I couldn't really fix all of it. There was Mr Jefferson, the storm, and a whole bunch of other things that I had to help with. There were times…" Max swallowed. "Times when I couldn't save people, and other times…" She forced herself to say the words. "When I had to choose not to. It wasn't easy, and neither is this, but I can't just stop trying to help even if it takes me places like here."

"Max!"

"What?" Max rounded on Chloe, feeling a little angry. "Chloe I'm trying to explain-"

But then she saw what Chloe had seen, and froze. Beyond the glass walls of the elevator, something incredibly bizarre was happening. For a long moment, Max stared, trying to rationalise what she was seeing, but in the end she was forced to settle on the one description that seemed appropriate.

The world was disappearing. Slowly but surely, the streets and buildings that they had seen on the approach were melting away into the mist, dissipating as if their previous solidity had been nothing but an incredibly convincing illusion.

"What the hell…?" she began, dumbfounded, and then the lift came to a sudden and jarring halt, almost sending her sprawling. "Shit!"

The doors slid open, slowly and silently. At first, Max had the terrifying thought that they were stuck between floors, because all that she could see was darkness; a shadow that gleaned only the faintest illumination from the pale haze of the mist outside. But her eyes adjusted in the end, and she was able to see that they were facing an office, black swivel chairs and terminals separated from one another by thin, cheap partitions. Although there was the usual debris scattered here and there - wrappers and the like, empty cups - her first impression was one of _falseness_. It looked and felt like an imitation, as if someone had pondered briefly what a stereotypical office would look like and created exactly that. As real as her senses told her it was, her head told her it wasn't. After pressing the button for the roof a few more optimistic times, she gave it up. Clearly, something wanted them to stop here.

She stepped out the lift, onto what in the gloom seemed like another black carpet. Closing her eyes, she rubbed her brow, wincing. All of a sudden, she had a headache.

"What the hell is going on?" Chloe muttered from behind her. "Max, this is so weird. What is even _happening_ right now?"

"Like I know," Max shot back.

"Well, if you don't know, and we don't know, and we're the only people that are here in the whole freaking world…"

"Yeah," she replied dryly. "I get it."

Suddenly, the floor moved. Stumbling, Max ducked instinctively, immediately thinking that it was some sort of earthquake. As the rumbling continued, however, she was soon expecting to see a white light; the same white light that had hurled her so unceremoniously into a strange world of dark hospitals, disappearing buildings, and surreal, empty streets. It felt very similar to that moment back in Blackwell Academy, only this time, in Blackwell Tower…

Well, nothing happened. Blinking, Max held her breath, waiting on the spot as the tremors became more regular, becoming a strange, slow beat that set her nerves on edge. It was almost like something pacing around, searching for something.

And then, Max was looking at the floor, her head entertaining notions that she really would rather not have contemplated.

"No, no, no, Caulfield," Chloe had moved alongside her, and was shaking her head. "Don't you even say it. I know what you're thinking."

"There's something… below us?" Max whispered. In the moments of stillness between those echoing beats, it felt right to lower her voice.

"I told you not to say it!"

"But-"

"Max." Warren's urgent hiss caught their attention. He spoke rapidly, as if on the verge of panic. "We have to go."

"Why?" Max asked sharply. "What's wrong?"

"Everything!" He was close to hyperventilating. Concerned, Max took a step towards him, but he shook his head fast. "There's no time. Max, we're the only people in this whole universe. It knows we're here! We have to run! It's not looking for us," he gasped, staring wild-eyed at the floor. "I don't know why I know, but… it's looking for the stairs! We have to go up!"

"Warren, calm-"

"I can't calm down, I can feel it getting closer!"

"We need to look at this logically," Max said, feeling a jolt of desperation. "We have to think about what we're doing, otherwise-"

"WE HAVE TO GO, NOW!"

"I CAN'T," Max shrieked. In despair, she clutched her head. "I DON'T UNDERSTAND! I FEEL LIKE I'M GOING INSANE!" she yelled, hearing her own voice crack on the last syllable.

She took a step back, breathing heavily. The pain in her skull had abruptly spiked, becoming the same, sharper pain that she had felt on the transition into the Fade. Feeling moisture on her lips, she pressed her sleeve to her mouth, and when it came away she was only a little surprised to see the white fabric stained red with blood.

"Max…!" Chloe's voice seemed to come from far away, and as her friend stepped forward Max could only watch with numbed horror. A darkness deeper than death was encroaching, descending across Max's vision like some grim spectre come to steal it away. She quickly realised that she was going to pass out.

But it was strange - so strange. Everything seemed to be getting clearer, as if the darkness had been no darkness at all but instead a lifting of a veil: as if the vision that had been stripped away had never been anything but a facade. And after Chloe and Warren had vanished, leaving her alone, the world felt realer than it ever had before; the colours brighter; the contrast more pronounced.

And she was staring down at her own lap, blood dripping from her parched lips. Dimly, she tried to raise her head, only to find the muscles in her neck stiff and atrophied, as if from years of disuse. There were bonds - strong, tough cords - around her wrists, binding her to the chair in which she was sitting, and they were around her ankles too, she quickly realised. But then…

"Oh, you've returned at last." The voice froze her blood in her veins. "That must have been quite a dream you were having?"

It couldn't be true. She closed her eyes tightly shut, telling herself that she was dreaming; hallucinating; anything that would mean that she was not where she thought she was.

"You know, it is interesting." His voice was chillingly calm. "I've been listening, Max, and I hear you've been building worlds." There was a clinking sound, as if of glass against glass. "It must be your natural photographer stirring. Your imagination's been getting restless, so it's started to play with the toys I've been giving to it."

This was not right. No matter how desperately she tried to wake up, it was not happening. Testing the straps around her limbs, Max felt a swell of panic building in her chest, because several terrifying thoughts had entered her head at the exact same moment. Looking up unwillingly, she stared at the blurry outline of the figure in front of her; a figure that was currently hunched over a metal table, using a syringe to carefully extract some anonymous solution from a slender phial. Despite the indistinctness, she could see that it was Mr Jefferson.

"Shit," she whispered to herself. "Shit shit shit. Come on, let me out of here," she pleaded with herself, trying to clear the images from her head by shaking it vigorously. "I'm not back here, I'm with Chloe and Warren. _Come on._ Shit…!"

It wasn't real. There was no way that she was in the Dark Room. Not even if that mysterious headache was back with a vengeance; not even if the Fade seemed like a distant, dying memory already.

Mr Jefferson sighed, turning to face her with the needle in hand. "Well, you caught me. It's true that you're not back here, I suppose. After all," he began to walk towards her, smiling coldly. "You never left."

 _Oh no._ As tears of terror began to gather in Max's eyes, she pushed back in her seat, trying futilely to put as many millimetres as possible between herself and the needle.

"STAY AWAY!" she shrieked.

Inspiration struck at the unlikeliest of moments, and she opened one of her fists - which she had clenched in fear - in an attempt to use her power.

Nothing happened. "What?" she cried, desperately. He was at her side… "NO!" she howled, as he pushed her head sideways, baring her neck and throat.

"Just stay still," he murmured. "I have to be careful how far I put you under, otherwise you might never get back…"

The words were too much for her. Max screamed.


	8. Chapter 8 - Darker Rooms

It was a long time before Max opened her eyes, but when she did, the sense of relief was overwhelming. Orange light shone, glinting in the pale, reflective surfaces of the Dark Room. Jefferson's needle was frozen, poised, next to her throat, and his face was an alarmingly mundane picture of studious concentration. There was nothing to suggest that he even comprehended how monstrous the actions that he had been about to perform actually were.

A Jarring. Of course. She should have known. She sighed shakily. Still, it hadn't exactly solved her problems. She still hadn't managed to figure out how she had made it back here.

Jefferson's explanation could be discounted. No hallucination could ever be as convincing as reality, and she knew what she had been experiencing in the Fade - even if it had been bizarre - had been real. Even if this place felt authentic as well - stale air and a faint chill - it hadn't exactly been a smooth transition. One moment, she had been speaking to Chloe and Warren, and the next she had sat up in the chair. Had she fallen into some trap?

What was it Rachel had said? The creature would attempt to dismantle the structure; to separate her from her friends so that it would be able to pursue them individually. All that was needed for the whole thing to fail was for one of them to die.

"I know what this is," she said aloud, quietly. "I know it's a lie. You can't trick me."

Nothing happened. Her words seemed to echo, despite having been uttered so softly. Even so, the air-conditioned air now seemed very, very cold: and then all of a sudden it was plummeting, falling so fast that the exposed skin on Max's forearms began to prickle, her body instinctively shrinking deeper into the chair in an attempt to preserve warmth. When she looked at Mr Jefferson, to see if he was feeling it too, Max's stomach turned in horror, because somehow, he seemed to be disappearing. Only, he wasn't simply fading away into nothingness, like the structures in the world of the Fade.

He was disintegrating. Ash - or was it dust? - was trickling from the rims of his glasses, fluttering down from his face onto the false floor, and before long it had become a veritable rain, the strange rot eating away at his face, his skin and his clothes. Everything about him that had been human had soon vanished into a pile of grayish soot that Max found herself staring towards, sickened.

 _"Max…"_

She froze. A jolt ran through the scene in front of her; a shiver not unlike that which had preceded her discovery of the Worldmaker. The voice had sounded like her mother - or had it been her father? Somehow, it had managed to sound like both of them at once, and other people too. There had been elements there of Chloe; elements of Rachel; elements of Warren; elements of… well, of everyone that she had ever known, or heard.

"Who's there?" she heard herself ask shakily.

There was a second jolt, and this time she felt something grow warm in one of the pockets of her jeans. Of course, she realised suddenly. She was carrying the Worldmaker. She couldn't reach it, but…

 _"Where are you, Max?"_

She opened her mouth again, intending to raise her voice, only to feel a hand clamp down on it. She would have screamed, had not Rachel - seemingly out of nowhere - suddenly leapt in front of her, looking from side to side, one hand clamped on Max's mouth and the other plucking the Worldmaker somewhat brazenly out of Max's pocket. With extreme care, she placed it on Max's lap, giving her a significant look, and then raised a finger to her lips, commanding silence. Thankfully, Max had the presence of mind to bite her tongue, a million thoughts racing through her head. Her foremost concern was Rachel ashen complexion, along with her expression of absolute terror.

Freed from the confines of her pocket, the Worldmaker suddenly stirred. A faint, golden shimmer began to surround it, and it leapt into the air, a sphere of amber light exploding forth from the tiny golden pyramid, radiating outward to become a large, ethereal shield containing Max, Rachel and the chair.

"Look at me." Rachel's voice was soft, but insistent. "Whatever you do, don't look away."

But behind her, something was stirring—something in the midst of the fomenting shadow. And there was something about it that was repellent; that was as disturbing as the sight of Blackwell Tower in the land of the Fade. But there was something, too, that made her want to look at it; that drew her eye as surely as any extraordinary image would draw the attention of any true photographer, no matter how terrible that image may be.

And it was truly terrible, whatever it was. All rot and carcass; the deepest and darkest depths of mankind laid bare before her unbelieving sight. And with every second that she gazed its way, she felt she knew it better, as if it had always been there on the periphery, ready to relay the boundless depravity of its infinite knowledge. And it was as if she gazed into an ocean, and that ocean was a lake of fire, wrath and holocaust, and it was true what they said about abysses, because as Max was staring deeply into the darkest void that any living being could have ever confronted, so too did she find it staring into her, knowing her as familiarly as she - in her absolute petrification and blind fear - somehow, knew it. And the terror that she felt then was nothing, compared to what she felt when its eyes - filled with maggots, death and recognition - looked so searingly upon her.

"LOOK AT ME, MAX!" Rachel screamed, as flames - from nowhere - swept through the Dark Room, through the ashes of Mr Jefferson and the dust of Max's dreams. "LOOK AT ME!" she howled, and her cry was so plaintive and desperate that, for the briefest of moments, Max wrenched her tear-streaked gaze from the grasp of the darkness.

"IT KNOWS WHO I AM!" Max shrieked back. "HELP ME!" she wailed. "RACHEL, HELP ME! IT KNOWS ME!"

And the girl that Max barely knew had suddenly gripped her face, pressing their foreheads together. "I'm here," she gasped, and she too was blinking away tears of fright. "I can reach you here. I promise, I won't let it have you."

"It knows me…" Max whimpered, as the fires smoldered; quelled, but only for a moment.

"It knows everyone. I don't know how, but it knows us all."

"I saw its f-face…"

"No. No you didn't." As the flames licked the Worldmaker's shield impotently, Rachel stroked Max's hair. "Because you're still alive," she murmured. "You're still here. It hasn't won."

Behind Rachel, the fires rose, triumphant and resurgent, swallowing even the darkness until the entire world beyond the walls of the shield was an inferno beyond all imagination. And Max would have looked at that conflagration; would have seen it, and been consumed. Only Rachel's lips pressed against hers, roughly and urgently, and instead, her mind went blank. Max's eyes fluttered shut in bewilderment and - more importantly - total distraction.

And, not for the first time, she slipped through the fingers of the shadow.

* * *

She woke coughing and spluttering, with explosions - both real and unreal - echoing in her ears. Her body was jolting around, bumping from side to side as whoever carried her continued to labour on at a run, gasping and panting desperately. Groggy, Max shifted in discomfort, dizzied by the motion and keen to establish, first of all, that she was back where she was meant to be.

"Max! Max!" Warren's yell took her by surprise, and she reached out instinctively, gripping a handful of his shirt and dragging it close. She almost succeeded in sending them both crashing to the ground, but he managed to stabilise them just in time. "Max are you alright?!"

"Are you real?" Still struggling to readjust, Max pressed her face into his chest, unable to stop herself from trembling. "This is real, right? I'm b-back?"

"Back from where?!" He turned to look over his shoulder suddenly, his arms tightening around her for a moment. "What do you mean? You passed out when that thing, whatever it was, began to move around downstairs! We've been carrying you with us, because you weren't waking up! We didn't know what to do. Max, you're- you're shaking…"

"This is real?" Max repeated, needing to hear it. "Please, Warren…" she whispered, her voice cracking.

"It's real. Max, it's real. What's wrong?" His voice was more anxious now.

"Oh my god, Warren." Max covered her face with her hands, desperate to rid herself of her new memories. "I think I saw it, but- but only for a second. The thing that's- that's behind everything. The thing that's coming for us."

"Come on, I can see it!" The shout emanated from close-by; Chloe sounded frantic. "We're almost there!"

"What was it, Max?" Warren asked softly.

They were on level ground now. There were no more stairs, so they had presumably reached the roof of the tower. Shuddering, Max stared unseeingly up at the ceiling, scared even to talk about it.

Talking about it would make it real, and in that moment there was nothing that frightened her more than that.

"I don't even know," she whispered. "But it scares the hell out of me. It was… like a nightmare."

There was a banging sound, and suddenly golden light burst dazzlingly in front of Max's eyes. Groaning, she threw a hand up to shield herself from the glare, aware that Warren had clattered clumsily through a metal door onto the roof. She was still shivering, still numb; still trying to process what she had seen, to rationalise away the sight of the thing that she had seen crouching in the darkness. Because how could such a thing exist? And what had it even been?

Whatever it was, it had looked at her. Her skin cold with fear, Max drew her legs closer to her chest. No, it was worse than that. It had recognised her. Her: some photography student from a tiny Oregon town. How was that possible? She drew a breath and shuddered. How could something with such ancient eyes have known who she was?

"Holy shit."

Chloe's voice was much closer this time. Feeling coolness on the back of her neck, Max realised that they were out in the open air once again. Forcing her face away from Warren's shirt, she made herself look around.

Three rails. Max's heart jumped. A set of three iron rails extended out from the roof across what, if the buildings of the Fade had remained, would have been the gulf between skyscrapers. They were set closely together, positioned carefully so that a person could - if they were so inclined - walk across one of the rails whilst using the other two for support. Motioning for Warren to put her down, Max regained her footing, still trembling but feeling able to move.

"What's… that?" Warren gasped. As she walked to the edge of the building, Max found herself shaking her head numbly.

Ahead, connected to Blackwell Tower by the rails, a structure was hanging in the sky. It looked like a jewel; shaped like a faceted diamond, and gleaming in the golden light of a renewed sun. It was as large as a house, with a breach in the centre that the rails passed through. The longer Max looked at it, the more she thought it looked like the Worldmaker. It did not look like it belonged to the Fade, and the thought made her optimistic.

"I think… it might be the exit."


End file.
